| Jaicee said: If there's no such thing as porn addiction then there's a recent, baffling epidemic of male erectile dysfunction to be explained, people. 1999 was the year the U.S. crossed the threshold whereafter the majority now had internet access and pornography has become fairly ubiquitous since then and has indeed become the understood default sex education of today's youth. The social consequences have ranged from mundane to quite serious. In the mundane category, girls and women today achieve orgasm less often in the course of heterosexual intimacy and are more often subjected to obviously porn-inspired practices like involuntary strangulation, so the quality of their sex lives has generally deteriorated. Also, today's younger generations are having actual sex less often, mainly because relationships are being formed less often; those being the main context in which sex takes place. Realities like these make a joke of the notion than pornography is "sex-positive" or healthy. Pornographic portrayals (invariably by heterosexual women), I might add, are also the main form of media representation that lesbians have had, and it's just a reality that this leads people to think of lesbians in particular, more so than other girls and women, as a kind of fetish and not so much as multi-dimensional human beings who ought to be treated as such. On the more serious side, industry advocates used to proclaim to me that porn also makes rape less common for the same sorts of reasons that it makes sex in general less common. One rarely sees this argument anymore, have you noticed? You know why that is? Because rape has, in fact, generally become more common here in the U.S., and in much of the world for that matter, over the last decade as pornography consumption has reached new heights. The circumstantial correlations used to make this argument in the past no longer exist today. None of this though really lies at the heart and soul of why I hate pornography, and indeed the sex industry in general. When I was a kid, the most controversial feminist in America was a woman named Andrea Dworkin. She passed away in 2005. In the riot grrl scene I was part of, we were divided over her work. What made her so controversial was her anti-pornogrpahy activism. Namely, she advocated for the enactment of a civil ordinance that would allow women who claimed damages from pornography to sue the producers and distributors thereof in court for compensation. (Talk about puritanical tyranny!) I was recently watching a (supportive) film about her activism that was originally released in 1991 for the occasion of its 30th anniversary anew. (Yeah, I do stuff like that.) What struck me the most about it on my new viewing was that it has scarcely aged a day. Some semantics have changed in the interim, but the core arguments you'll hear about porn not only stand the test of time, but are actually more pertinent today, if anything. The crux of her argument wasn't simply that porn causes rape, but that rape and battery are leading causes of pornography; that the sex industry could hardly exist in a world without relatively female-specific PTSD. And you hear from survivors at length. The vast majority of women in pornography were sexually abused and/or battered as children. Thus when we normalize porn, what are we really normalizing? That is the most important issue here as far as I'm concerned and the main, underlying reason why I've got nothing good to say about this business. |
I mean… just bringing problems and linking to easily accessible porn is kind of a weird way to approach the issue at hand. Erectile dysfunction? Maybe because America is fat? The quality of food has deteriorated? More estrogen and estrogen-like materials in food and food containers? Maybe the younger generation has no hope of owning a home and starting a life without having to work in competitive field make them stressed all the time?
The reality is that unless you’re a super working hard individual who goes to medical school, engineering school or chooses a very relevant speciality, you’ll end up struggling saving up. Even if you end up with a relevant degree, you’ll still need to compete with locals and foreigners giving how open the market is right now. Long gone the days in which working as a seller in a shop 5 days a week, 12 hours a day, was enough to live a life with dignity (owning a house). I’d say all of this has a much bigger impact on someone’s well-being and ability to perform than watching porn. Even if porn is responsible for making sex less appealing, is that a really problem? It’s not like you’re not getting any joy out of porn or masturbating? If you prefer to have a fuller sex experience and you’re convinced porn is the reason, stop watching porn and see how that affects your sexual life overall? Also, I imagine in a porn-less society, one would still close their eyes and masturbate anyway….
As for porn portrayal of women and lesbians, that is a problem with the entertainment media as a whole. Women and minorities only recently started to get a proper presentation in movies, TV, etc. So recent that Harvery’s abuse was public knowledge, a subject of comedy for many sitcoms (BoJack and 30 rock), until someone decided to “hmm…. This isn’t good”. The answer to these problems is to correct them, protect women and minorities, and provide them with the ability to perform without having to be victims. But again, most here are pointing fingers without providing solutions, me including 
I don’t know about rape and pornography, but it would be interesting to look at the numbers you brought up and dissect them. Maybe rape has gone up because population has increased magnificently? Genuinely curious. Also the definition of what is considered rape has changed, hasn’t it? It wouldn’t surprise me if rape in the past was a much bigger issue. Again, talking out of my ass here, but I am on a hurry and a in-depth look at the numbers would help.
I honestly don’t know about rape statistics, but the general theme in this thread has been “porn consumption has increase, so mental health issues and rape. A connection must be there!”…. No?
Last edited by LurkerJ - on 23 August 2021
